Simona de Silvestro: Indy 500 woman race car driver

Danica Patrick isn’t the only Indy 500 woman race car driver receiving attention these days. Simona de Silvestro qualified with a better time than Patrick for this 2010 Indianapolis 500 race. So will Helio Castroneves defend his 2009 title or will someone else dethrone him? Perhaps it could be one of the four women (Ana Beatriz of Brazil, American Sarah Fisher, Danica Patrick and Simona) competing in this year’s race. Read more and see photos here.

Meet Simona de Silvestro, also referred to as “Swiss Miss”, an Indy 500 woman race car driver who is set to race in this year’s Indy 500 race. de Silvestro was born on September 1st, 1988 in Thun, Switzerland, which makes her to be 21 years of age at the time of this writing. There is not a lot of biographical information on de Silvestro, but we will update once we receive more information. What we do know is that Simona is a rookie racer who currently races for the Team Stargate Worlds.

Simona has had a couple of recent notable high points in her career. In 2008, Simona won the Atlantic Championship race that was held at the Long Beach Grand Prix. Remarkably, she was just the second woman to ever win that series. During the year of 2009, Simona went on to win four different times, a great feat.

This year’s Indy 500 race, Simona qualified in the 22nd position, just one spot ahead of Danica Patrick and the comparisons have been swirling as three other females besides Simona will be participating in this race.

Interestingly enough, Simona’s homeland of Switzerland put a big fat ban on racing over 50 years ago but the interest didn’t stop De Silvestro. So what inspired Simona’s passion for racing? Television. Simona says, “My dad said, when I was a baby, I was always quiet when Formula One was on.”

So what does she think about all those Danica Patrick comparisons? Simona says, “Because she did so well it opened some doors. It is nice to be racing against her because everybody knows who Danica is. She seems to be pretty comfortable right off the getgo.”

Good luck to Simona De Silvestro and the other three women racing in this year’s Indy 500!

Check out Simona’s official website at http://www.simonadesilvestro.com.

Photo: Wikipedia.org/Manningmbd, Flickr.com/kecko

This entry was posted on May 30, 2010 at 9:46 am and is filed under Celebrity Biographies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.